What do you even try to do with something like this?

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We continue to count down to the 2016 amateur draft in early June by focusing on 2015 draft picks. Today, we’re looking at three of the top catchers selected last year. And it’s not really that pretty…

Austin Allen | Padres | C
ETA: 2018
Value: Rising

The other two catchers on this list were selected in the first round of the 2015 draft. Allen, though, lasted until the fourth round due to concerns over his ability to stick behind the plate. Those concerns are still there but there are fewer and fewer surrounding his bat. With that said, he’s come back down to earth a bit with the bat after an unreal start to the year in April. He’s hitting just .238 in May but his triple-slash line is still .349/.428/.460 in 36 games. Despite the recent downturn, the BB-K rate of 15-21 is solid and quality left-handed hitting catchers are always in demand. The Padres have some catching depth in the upper minors and at the big league level so Allen will have some time to polish his skills.

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Episode 167 – Register Your Cereals

The latest episode of “Field of Streams” is live!

In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Matthew Dewoskin discuss Matt’s cereal day, Matt buying Brewers tickets, Memorial Day, the return of The Vedder Cup, Utley U Butt-ley, Matt falling for Nomar Mazara, having to respect Adam Duvall, having to trust Ian Kennedy, Dylan dropping the ball while trying to spontaneously think of a strikeout pitcher, and Matt’s opinions on the White Sox potentially trading for James Shields.

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This morning’s Roto Riteup wishes you a happy Memorial Day. Go out there and barbeque (and drink) like a friggin champ.

On the agenda:
1. Fun with arbitrary endpoints: Hitters
2. Fun with arbitrary endpoints: Pitchers
3. Various News and Notes
4. Streaming Pitcher Options

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Sorry I missed you all for most of this weekend, so I’ll make sure to catch you up on the long weekend. There were some mighty stumbles this weekend, but none that should rock the closer grid. Per usual, there were the fair share of saves and only one that so far has made movement in the grid since you last saw it. Let’s talk about the falls first.
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Today’s Roto Riteup celebrates waking up on a Sunday, lying in bed for a couple hours, and realizing you get to the do the same thing tomorrow.

On the agenda:
1. This is the Gordon Beckham we wanted
2. Various News and Notes
3. Streaming Pitcher Options

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Today’s Roto Riteup mourns for the career of Julio Urias. It was fun while it lasted, kid.

On the agenda:
1. Urias’ Short Debut
2. Various News and Notes
3. Streaming Pitcher Options

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Agenda

1. Pinch-hitting
2. Daily DFS
3. SaberSim Observations
4. Tomorrow’s Targets
5. Factor Grid

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Alright we’re back here for another week of #2xSP. We’re off to a pretty good start halfway through week seven. Here’s what we’re working with:

17-10 record
3.48 ERA
7.9 K/9
2.9 K/BB
1.29 WHIP
24 quality starts

And now here’s who we’re working with this week (with team wRC+ in parentheses):

RHP Junior Guerra – 18.1% ESPN – v. STL (116), @PHI (75)

Guerra’s a 31-year-old rookie who has put together a pretty nice first run through the NL with a 3.30 ERA through five starts. He’s got a 3.15 FIP, exactly a strikeout per inning and has allowed just two home runs through 30 innings thus far. Like a lot of week’s we’re sacrificing a pretty tough matchup for a really good one on the other side. Guerra’s PITCHf/x profile is plenty interesting, as he throws in the mid 90s with a slider and a split. The fastball is nothing to write home about in terms of results (.870 OPS against), but the split and curve both carry OPS marks against in the .300s. The split also has an excellent swinging-strike rate of 21 percent. So with that and a solid heater — at least velocity wise — I like him as a decent option this week. Read the rest of this entry »

I know some tiered rankings have come out this week, but I wanted to take you in a little different direction this week. Next week I will have the first base tiered rankings up. This week, I wanted to explore a new statistic I came up with that will probably not help you win your league. It is simply a fun way to look at pitchers in a different light, so I hope you enjoy reading about it as much I enjoyed exploring it.

I am fortunate enough to have Jake Arrieta on one of my teams, so I have been able to look at his starts individually. I started to notice that even though he was giving up very few hits, he seemed to be giving up a lot of walks along with a high number of strikeouts. This got me wondering if Arrieta was turning into a modern day Nolan Ryan, where he was not going to let you make contact even if that meant walking the hitter. Turns out there are better comps to Nolan Ryan, but I’ll get more into that later.

Initially, I thought I could look at contact%, but that looks at every single pitch and that is not really what I wanted. I wanted to see which pitchers allowed the least amount of balls in play on average. So I created the Nolan Ryan percentage (NR% for short). To calculate NR%, you simply add K% and BB%. Nothing complicated. Nothing groundbreaking. Just a fun way to see which pitchers are like Nolan Ryan in terms of either striking out or walking most of their hitters.
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